My Happy Place

My studio, which has also turned into an office space, is finally done. What a great feeling! I can walk straight in and sit down at all three of my work stations without climbing over furniture or boxes. I suddenly feel so graceful. There is even enough room in the middle of the floor for my kids to come and sit and play and hang out with me. I have a separate photography station, which doubles also as a display area for when I have showings. I have worked on updating my images for my website. It is nice that I can create a piece and roll across the room and take a picture of it. My work space used to also be my photo space, which was a bit of a hassle to have to actually put everything away every time I wanted to take pictures. And then it just took way to long to have to take a few dozen pictures at once. Even I don’t have patience for that. I spent close to a week on eBay obsessively watching Kodak camera auctions and I ended up with a refurbished Kodak C330 straight from the factory for $61.00. So now I have my own digital camera. It has taken a little while to get used to it, but I think the pictures are turning out pretty good. Now I just have to get them on to the website.

I did put everything away before we started the remodeling to keep it safe, but now it is Organized. When the dust started to fly around our house I just opened up drawers and tossed little boxes into bigger boxes and closed everything up. It has frustrated me not being able to get to my work space. I have spent most of the past week organizing all my supplies. I have found things I forgot I had. I was so sick in my first trimester and we were doing so much work on the house that I didn’t even have time to think about my studio. Luckily everything that was ordered was in stock and easily accessible. While I was going through my supplies I felt like I was getting a big shipment of new supplies in. It felt really good to touch all the stones and silver. I have so many new ideas and I feel so inspired. Few things make me happier, than when I am beading. It is an unexplainable peace that overcomes me.

In the middle of it all is my office space, which of course is organized. It’s actually more like the “kitchen triangle”, but instead of the “fridge, sink, stove” triangle I have the “work space, photo space, office space” triangle that flows around the room. Its kinda fun, I can roll my chair from my work space to the photo space and over to the computer. My kids are enjoying that part a bit too much, but I love to see them laugh and fly around my studio.

Now that everything is organized, I can finish everything off with the decorating. Most of the artwork is up. Maybe I will get around to that today. This will be the finishing touch, to finally have my work space back in order…but also to finally have a complete studio/office area that is all in one room. It’s the once space I have that the kids don’t leave toys behind in. It’s my little space, the only place in this world I can call mine.

When my second son Eli was about 5 months, this was his room, we walked through it to get to my bedroom and it was nice to have the baby so close, but not quite in the same room any more. Now it looks like the new baby will be sharing my room for a lot longer. We did look into moving, and found a great house that had 3 bedrooms and studio space…and it didn’t need any remodeling at all. But we have put so much into this house making it work for us, and we are not even done with it yet. Four rooms still have a bit of work to be done. I guess we have about a year or so before the new baby will need his/her own space, so I suppose we will figure it out then. I want more than anything to move closer to NY, I miss my home so much, so at this point it really doesn’t matter where we live as long as I have my personal space to share with my children.

For now I have three choices, 1. To decorate my studio. 2. Get creative and start making jewelry. Or 3. Do nothing and go hang out with my kids.

Emil is 4 and is actually a really big help when it comes to decorating, he loves to help figure out where to put something. I guess for now I will start with a quick trip to the couch. Eli is walking around with a pirate book and a request for a reading. It looks like I get to do everything.